Bone House_ A Novel - Betsy Tobin [75]
She looks at me for confirmation of this choice, or perhaps for absolution, but I find that I am too stunned to offer it.
“Why did you not tell me earlier?” I ask at length.
“What purpose would it have served?” she says. Perhaps she is right. Some truths are only agents of suffering.
And yet I had a right to know. For I am like the scar upon her belly: we are what remains.
We sit in silence, trussed in memory, until darkness falls. And by the end of day a curious thing occurs: our silence forms a kind of harmony. It is the first time I have felt anything like companionship with my mother.
I leave her finally and return to the Great House, for there is nowhere else to go, and it seems as if the walls themselves exert some power over me, pull me back within their confines. I have forgotten entirely about my mistress in the interim, and when I enter through the kitchen, Cook looks at me a little strangely, as if something about my person has altered.
“She asked for you,” she says, nodding upstairs. I stare at her, do not reply. “I told her your mother was in need,” she adds.
“It was the truth,” I say without explaining further. I turn and leave the kitchen, make my way toward the great hall and its portrait gallery. It is there I find him, and he is waiting for me. The portrait seems almost alive: his eyes are full of venom and they lock me in their gaze. Perhaps my mother is wrong—perhaps I do not belong beneath his roof. But the portrait holds me frozen to the spot: I stand for several minutes until I hear a noise behind me. I tear my eyes from those up on the wall and turn to see the painter at the end of the gallery. He watches me intently, and the look upon his face is uncomprehending.
“Are you all right?” he asks, taking a step forward.
I shake my head and push past him, run up the stairs to the haven of my room, where I collapse into sleep.
But I cannot stop him from my dreams. He comes to me just as he is within the Great House portrait: a man of forty-odd years, tall, dark-complected, stern of visage. In my dream he is perched upon the giant mare, clutching a bullwhip tightly in his hand. And then I see that she is drenched in blood. It oozes through her chestnut coat as if through a carpet, and the foam flies about her mouth. Her urges her forward and she takes a step, then falters, her long legs trembling. He begins to beat her savagely with the whip, and she meets my gaze for one brief moment, then collapses under his weight, the whites of her eyes glistening. He rolls free from her and with one swift movement draws the pearl-handled knife and slits her belly lengthwise like a vast ripe fruit. The skin of her belly opens and out tumbles the boy, the crooked boy, fully clothed and blinking back his fear. His father raises the bullwhip and the boy stumbles to his feet and runs away, leaving his father shouting obscenities in his wake. I turn and watch the boy disappear around the corner of the yard, and when I turn back to the master his demon eyes glow red. He sees me now, raises the whip in my direction, but when I try to run I find that I am frozen to the spot. The mare’s blood runs in rivers across the soil, and soon it surrounds me like the tide. I glance down at my feet and they are awash with her suffering.
Chapter Seventeen
I wake uneasily, with a strong sense that I must act quickly before my mother’s fate is wrenched from our hands. The other servants are already huddled over their bread and prayers when I descend. I pause just outside the great hall and listen to the low but steady murmur of voices and the occasional peal of laughter. When I enter, silence falls over them and a row of inquiring eyes greets me. I think of the scar upon my mother’s belly and wonder whether the women have maintained their silence. If so, it is only a matter of time, for the devil’s teat is too powerful a secret to lay buried for long. I do not sit with them, but cross directly to the kitchen, where